


To Die For

by SilverMiko



Series: Sight Unseen [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, John Watson is kind of an ass sometimes, Molly is the best, Romance, Seeing And Not Observing, Sherlock is still a bit not good, Slow Burn, TRF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 13:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10247111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMiko/pseuds/SilverMiko
Summary: The storm that is Moriarty blows in full force, and the Game is on more than ever. But with the stakes higher than ever Sherlock will have to rely on the one person who has always counted, even when she doesn't realize it herself, to help him as he falls.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was a beast, y'all. TRF-compliant. If this one had a theme song, The Birthday Massacre's "To Die For" would be it. Thank you everyone following along with this series. I had to watch TRF a couple times to get the timelines as right as I could. It was a such a chore, I tell you. ;)
> 
> You might want to read earlier stories in this series but for reference, Eliza is Anthea. In this series, that's her real name. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Things had been different since Christmas, since Sherlock apologized (and meant it), in subtle degrees. It was as if they both understood something had shifted between them yet agreed not to speak it aloud. That would have been too much honesty. But now he knew, openly, that she was completely aware that many of the things he had said in the past were horrible, that she was not so blind in knowing what his forced compliments meant, that perhaps she would not let those things slide so easily anymore. She noticed he was trying to be kinder, in his own way, and watch his words around her. Oh, he was still awfully blunt and completely lacking self-awareness when it came to other people, but he seemed to be trying for *her*. She tried not reading into that too much. Since Christmas she had realized that while he was trying she also needed to try. It wasn’t fair to expect him to somehow return her feelings, it wasn’t fair to be jealous towards some dead woman in a morgue, or to hold him responsible for her heart. So she needed to try and move past this and maybe, just maybe, try friendship for real this time. No matter how she felt for him, or the fact that she would always care deeply for him, her life did not and had never hinged on Sherlock Holmes, nor should anyone else expect it too. So, friends it was, then. It would help though if she could ever really grapple what exactly they were, and she suspected he didn’t really have an honest answer either. There’s only so much they can yet comfortably say to each other.  
But for all they don’t say, she did make one thing clear, on Valentine’s Day no less, as they sit over coffee in Baker Street after she’s dropped off some test results and he stiltedly compliments her red dress. She’s anything if not festive despite being single. She sighed as she blows at the mug in her hands.  
“It’s not going to work anymore, you know, so best you just stop it altogether.”  
“Stop...what exactly?”  
“The flirting, Sherlock. You needn’t bother and I think we both know we’re past that now. I just...if you need something just ask, and maybe allow me the agency to decide? You don’t need to put on an act, I’m not...it just, well,” she pauses, trying to get the words right.  
“Molly,” he murmurs, not an admonishment like in the past when she’s being awkward, it’s an assurance.  
“What I mean is that I’d like to think at the very least you have some respect for me.”  
“And paying you compliments is disrespectful?” he asks, almost confused.  
How such a brilliant man could be so inept when it came to other people was so ridiculous if it wasn’t also frustrating. He could observe the unobservable but Lord! Sometimes he just didn’t see.  
“It is when you don’t mean it.”  
And there it was. His mouth moved to say something, but instead he took a sip of his coffee. Perhaps he was learning after all. She wasn’t sure he wanted him to say anything back, because this new level of honesty between them was still new and fragile and she was only so brave. So she finished her coffee, wished him well, and left. He walked her to the door, and stood at the door a moment longer than needed as she was already around the corner towards the Tube station.

Part of him was glad she asked him to stop, because he was tired of pretending. It wasn’t that he didn’t always mean what he said, her lipstick had looked good, her hairstyle that particular day in the canteen did suit her, but he wasn’t saying those things for what John would have called the right reasons. He was just playing the game, wasn’t that what The Woman had said? But even though he did it countless times it never quite felt right with her. Sometimes it was exhausting to pretend. And the terrible thing was she knew, all this time, what he was doing and helped anyway. But she always had been like that, hadn’t she? Even when she hadn’t liked him she had been efficient and worked hard to work with him. When she started to actually like him it made everything easier, to move into her space, ask for larger favors, to maneuver through her life and he could have and often told himself it was because he valued her skill above everything else. But he wondered if that was the honest answer these days.  
Mycroft certainly had read something into it, calling Bart’s his home away from home. He was not sure he liked how much Mycroft read into things.  
But no, he would stop the flirtations. It was a flawed tactic now anyway, and he would assure himself that was why he was mentally acquiescing so easily.  
He threw himself into casework, and before he knew it he realized he hadn’t actually seen Molly in weeks. He was not ignoring her per se, but perhaps he was distracting himself from trying to figure out how to operate around her these days. It was not exactly helpful that Mycroft had decided to be in a sharing mood lately after Moriarty’s trial. He thought Sherlock might want to see footage of Molly’s debriefing after learning Jim From IT was Jim Moriarty.  
‘You might learn something valuable,’ Mycroft had drawled.  
Mycroft even had the gall to suggest it’s to ascertain from Sherlock on if Molly is telling the truth or not. As if Mycroft would have ever doubted the “inestimable Mis Hooper.” Funny how the normally facetious tone in his voice was absent when he called her that. For Mycroft, that was outright praise.  
His brother left him with the DVD, and he didn’t watch it right away. He circled around it, pretended it wasn’t there, but hours later he was sitting at his laptop watching as a small room comes onscreen and Molly was there, wearing that bright primary colored striped jumper, clutching a paper cup of tea in her hands. He noticed her fingers fidget, she was nervous. It’s slight really, but he noticed. Her words may falter but Molly Hooper had some of the steadiest hands he knew.  
Eliza was there, sitting across from Molly. Of course it’s Eliza and not Mycroft himself about to ask this line of inquiry. Either Mycroft Holmes felt somehow so indebted to Molly, or he genuinely seemed to respect her enough to be the one to do the asking. Because Sherlock knew what they’re going to ask. It said quite a lot that Mycroft sent in his girl Friday and not some lower level middleman.  
“How long were you acquainted with one James Moriarty?” Eliza asked, cool as always with her voice carefully schooled to pleasant neutrality. She had a poker face that could beat them all.  
Molly fidgeted at the lip of the cup, pinching at it.  
“Not very long, a week maybe? Barely even.”  
“But in that time you two formed an attachment?”  
“We got on, yea. He seemed so...sweet. He bought me coffee, and we had lunch. It was only three dates, really.”  
“And was he ever in your home?”  
“Once. We watched telly.”  
“Miss Hooper, did you have sexual relations with him?”  
Her fingers pause.  
Sherlock wasn’t aware he’d been gripping the edge of his desk so tightly.  
“No, it was only three dates and Sherlock said…”  
“Sherlock said what?”  
“That Jim was gay. And I believed him. I broke it off that night and hadn’t heard from him since. I thought he was upset but I guess not. I guess now I know why he wasn’t returning my calls. I didn’t know he was Moriarty, would have never suspected.”  
“Were you in love with him?”  
“No, of course not. I barely knew him. And, I honestly don’t know how much longer I would have dated him anyway. I’m sure your boss doesn’t believe for one second I’m infatuated with the man or in secret collusion.”  
“Then why go on dates with a man you didn’t think you would stay with?”  
“Because he was nice to me, and seemed to mean it when he said I had a cute nose, and I suppose it was nice to feel wanted. Someone who knew what ‘having coffee’ means.”  
Sherlock stopped the DVD. There was no reason to see more. Moriarty had played Sherlock’s own game with Molly, and played it better. He wondered if Moriarity even knew it.  
‘I’m going to burn the heart out of you…’  
Of course Moriarty knew. Sherlock felt his resentment for the criminal grow even deeper. It had been a game at first, and Sherlock had enjoyed playing it, but now it was creating collateral damage.  
And maybe it was feeling like he had indirectly helped Moriarty prey so easily on Molly, maybe it was some of Molly’s answers about enjoying someone who seemed genuine, who understood about coffee, but he hadn’t seen her in weeks until he and John strolled into Bart’s just as she seemed about to leave for lunch, because he needed the lab, of course, he needed her help, of course, and it had nothing to do with some unknown reason to just see *her*.  
But she was on her way out, she had a lunch date.  
A lunch date? Good god, not another bloke. When would Molly learn her relationships were disasters?  
He produced two packets of Quavers instead as she’d be spending lunch with him. He’s learning, he liked to think, because he at least had the sense to bring her something to eat since they needed help dealing with one of her boyfriends who had been naughty. When John asked if he meant Moriarty, Sherlock fought the urge to roll his eyes but confirmed it anyway. It was not as if all the people Molly Hooper fell for were sociopaths, though it was strange how that suddenly being plural bothered him so much.  
She reiterated that it was only ever three dates with Jim, he wasn’t really her boyfriend and she had broken it off. Sherlock knew this of course, but pretended it didn’t matter. He didn’t tell her how cute she looked that day with her cherry print jumper either, he wasn’t supposed to pay her those compliments anymore.  
But he did tell her, another flippant quip, that she should considering giving up dating altogether for the sake of law and order. He was sure John assumed it was just Sherlock being sarcastic, and Sherlock let even himself think that was the case too.  
He settled at the microscope, sliding into the familiarity of the work as John and Molly assisted, although Molly doing the brunt of the work. This was where they communicated best, as it were. Settling straight into the science part of things, he didn’t have to think about the new thoughts associated with Molly he couldn’t delete, they could maneuver together effortlessly without all the rest getting in the way. Until it did get in the way.  
“Alkaline,” her soft voice supplied as they ran their test.  
“Thank you, John,” he replied, absentmindedly. He was so deep into the Game that the people around him have blurred. He had been trying hard to not think about how good it felt to sink back into working with Molly, and perhaps that’s why he had brought John with him. John rarely came to the lab, it wasn’t his area, but Sherlock had needed the buffer. Perhaps that was why he called her the wrong name, it was another way to buffer. These were trying times, and he didn’t need distractions. He didn’t need to be thinking too much on her, on them, when the Game was on.  
But he could tell she was quietly, almost impatiently, annoyed with him.  
“Molly,” she supplied, almost a huff.  
He doesn’t apologize, returning to the microscope and trying to figure it all out, to unravel Moriarty’s puzzle.  
I O U, I O U…  
“I O U…” he muttered under his breath.  
She asked him suddenly, what that meant. She heard him of course, and they both watch as John crossed to the other side of the lab, away from earshot to them. Something in his demeanor must have changed a fraction too obviously, because Molly noticed something. She was always picking up on things more lately.

Molly had been watching him carefully, and everything almost could have looked like it was normal. But his energy felt more nervous than excited, and when John had moved to the other side of the lab there had been a slight shift. As if the mask slipped up a bit. Sherlock put on a good show when John and the others were around, but Molly didn’t miss the way Sherlock’s expression slipped when it was just the two of them at the bench. When no one else was looking. It killed her, because she knew that look so painfully well.  
And maybe that was why she said something, when John couldn’t hear or see. She couldn’t contain the worry and all the assorted feelings churning in her anymore, not with so much that seemed to be on the line. Maybe he was keen to pretend for the others, but she wasn’t them. It was evident enough in that he wasn’t pretending in front of her.  
“You’re a bit like my dad, he’s dead. No sorry,” she winced at that as the words came out, of course Sherlock knew that. She realized he might not understand what she was trying to say, because he responded in the manner he usually did when he couldn’t pick up on subtext or wanted to change the subject.  
“Molly, please don’t feel the need to make conversation. It’s really not your area.”  
She didn’t let it deter her, because she knew by now it was his way of saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about this right now.’ His defense was offense, always had been, and they both knew she was past just letting it slide. So she continued without missing a beat.  
““When he was dying he was always cheerful, he was lovely. Except when he thought no one could see. I saw him once, he looked sad.”  
“Molly.” It was almost a warning, but she persisted.  
“You look sad, when you think he can’t see you. Are you okay? Don’t just say you are because I know what it means--looking said when you think no one can see you.”  
He paused for a moment, taking her words in.  
“You can see me,” he said, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. She could feel her throat tighten and the words burning as they slipped off her tongue.  
“I don’t count.”  
It was amazing how three tiny words could carry ten years of context. But she finally said them, dragging the truth she had felt for a long time out into the open whether either of them wanted to face it or not.  
She didn’t miss the look he gives her, the subtle off-guard nature of it as if her words were a total surprise. She carried on, taking a brief, sharp inhalation of breath.  
“What I’m trying to say is if there’s anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me.” She winces again. God, couldn’t she for once just be eloquent this one time? “No, I just mean. I mean if there’s anything you need, it’s fine.”  
It would have been easier slicing into her chest with the scalpel laying across the room. It would have hurt less.  
“What could I need from you?”  
She wanted to laugh or cry, or both. He could really be such a dick, sometimes. It wasn’t even stated with harshly, it was said with genuine wonder, as if he was truly curious as to what little Molly Hooper could do for the Great Detective. She tried to steel her nerves and let her own mask of understanding kindness, of polite acquiescence, slip.  
“Nothing. I don’t know. You could probably say thank you, actually.”  
Thank you for letting you use the lab, the morgue, her time, her space, her help, thank you for her at all caring about him, caring enough to give him free reign of her kingdom of the dead, thanks again for saving his life, thanks again for helping him become a graduate chemist, thanks for not shutting him out years ago or walking away. Thanks for putting up with him so thanklessly. But she didn’t say any of that because at the end of the day she knew it didn’t matter; she might not count but Sherlock Holmes in the least valued her scientific skills. It was the one thing she was always sure of.  
“Thank you?” he replied, but it’s more like a question than actual gratitude.  
She wondered if he knew this was tearing her apart, being so worried for him and powerless to do much. She knew the type of man he was, she didn’t actually expect him to suddenly change, but for once, just for bloody once she almost wished he would go back to pretending or flirting so she wasn’t standing here feeling like she was being cut open alive.  
And she knew she had to walk out, at least for a moment, because it was all too much.  
“I’m just going to get some crisps. Do you want anything?” she catches herself, knowing he doesn’t eat when he’s working, it slows him down, “It’s okay, I know you don’t.”  
She was poised to flee, so ready to bolt.  
“Well actually, maybe I…”  
He might be trying, but it’s past that for her already.  
“I know you don’t,” she repeated, more forcefully as she bursted out of the lab to take a few long moments to collect herself. Maybe she was feeling a bit too self-deprecated by saying she didn’t count, but she didn’t want him trying to be nice out of pity either. She didn’t know at the moment what she honestly wanted except for this whole mess to blow over, to feel like she could do something more to help and make it go away. Little Miss Perfect, always the control freak, desperately feeling anything but in control. 

He watched her go, feeling slightly shook. She didn’t count? Of course she counted, why would she think otherwise?  
‘Why indeed?’ he could almost hear Mycroft in his head as if he were in the room, judging the situation.  
Because it wasn’t as if he ever made her feel like she counted, he realized. Oh, he apologized at Christmas, he had been trying to be nice, but he had never done much to let her think she was anything valuable beyond a pathologist who tolerated him when one added all their encounters up. Even when he invaded her personal space it was always for the Game, always when he needed something. Never to just have coffee. He was giving serious thought to going exclusively to tea.  
But now was not the time for him to figure out how to respond to her, to apologize for something he doesn’t quite understand, and certainly not in front of John. Some things did not need an audience.  
So he let it go, focusing back on the work. She would be okay, she was always okay, but part of him still hoped they would be okay.  
But the Game mattered now, the Game always mattered. Even when it wasn’t being particularly kind to him lately. Still, it was familiar and only needed cold, irrefutable logic from him. It didn’t ask for more, not usually, but lately it seemed to ask for everything.  
Still, he needed to find some way to eventually make sure he was square with Molly. Like it not, beyond anything else, he relied on her. Even John saw that, despite everything else he didn’t see. He had commented on their way back to Baker Street that sometimes he felt like a third wheel at Bart’s because Sherlock and Molly were always so bizarrely in sync and it was spooky how much they got done without talking. Sherlock shrugged at that.  
“We’ve always been good with chemistry.”  
John started laughing, as if Sherlock had told a joke.  
“What pray tell is so funny?”  
“Nothing, nothing at all. It’d be lost on you.”  
“Are you somehow making fun of me? I’m not sure what’s so humorous about the fact that she’s more or less been my partner since college.”  
John snorted and Sherlock really didn’t understand and wasn’t sure he wanted to. He had enough to worry about, and would a while longer.

***

Moriarty’s latest scheme was so ludicrous it was actually perfect, but that didn’t mean Molly wasn’t feeling very cross at the press, at the police, and most everyone in general. Maybe Sherlock Holmes wasn’t the nicest man but he was a great one. How quickly the world turned on the famous “Hat Detective” when it suited them. She had to hand it to Moriarty, he was a good actor and this Richard Brooks story was a clever one. Maybe that was why playing at being a supposed actual actor was easy for him. Greg doesn’t buy it either, neither does John nor Mrs. Hudson. Not a large party in his corner, though.  
She had kept quiet though, and luckily it wasn’t *that* much common knowledge that Sherlock often did much of his work at Bart’s or that she had been working with him. Maybe there were some perks to everyone assuming he only really worked with Greg and John. She wasn’t bothered by that Kitty Riley person, although it hadn’t hurt Mycroft had someone keeping watch to run interference. Maybe this year she’d send him a hawk-themed Christmas card. Eliza would probably get a total kick out of that.  
Molly kept the worry, the resentment, and all of it bottled in her tightly. Keep calm and carry on, they did say. And she had been doing a credible job of it until Greg had asked her to pick up a body at a scene, a boring case that would have been a two on Sherlock’s scale, and Philip had been there. They’d always gotten on decently and as much as Sherlock made fun of Anderson, Molly had to admit he was a good at forensics and not an actual idiot in that regard. Just slower than Sherlock. Most everyone was. In some ways she had thought Sherlock was too hard on Philip, but those charitable feelings took a huge backseat that day.  
“Always knew Holmes acted too clever for his own good, makes sense he payed this bloke. No one is that clever.”  
She doesn’t even remember how they’d gotten on to the topic of Sherlock, she only remembered seeing red.  
Before Greg could intervene or apologize, because it would have easy for Greg to assume the comment would upset Molly, she spun on her heels and actually got into Philip’s face.  
“Just because you and Donovan could never stand being shown up by Sherlock don’t think for one minute I share your illwill. I really hope you two are enjoying this, because when everyone realizes the truth you two are going to look like the biggest fools in England.”  
“And what truth is that, Dr. Hooper?”  
“That Sherlock Holmes is not the villain of this story,” she said, her voice sharp as an ice pick. She said nothing more and left, leaving Anderson flustered and Greg surprised by her tone. Later, Greg mentioned she had really given Anderson a run for his money, so much that Philip had wondered aloud if perhaps there had been something going on between her and Sherlock that nobody else suspected. Molly laughed at that, although a bit bitterly, but she saw the question in Greg’s eyes.  
“There’s no secret romance, I’m afraid. You have met Sherlock Holmes, yea? Not his area.”  
Greg nodded, and she could tell he felt sorry for wondering.  
“I know, doesn’t mean I wasn’t rooting for you all the same.”  
“I appreciate it. That being said, no need to really correct Phillip, is there? Maybe it’s best to let him stew on this for a bit.”  
“Molly Hooper, I do believe you have a devious streak.”  
She merely grinned in reply.  
“He’s going to be alright though?”  
They both know she wasn’t talking about Anderson.  
“I’ll do what I can, but I’m in hot water myself these days with all this.”  
They were waiting for the storm named Moriarty to blow over, and Molly hoped they’d make it out unscathed. She could see the toll it was taking on Greg, on Scotland Yard, on John and Sherlock. Even poor Mrs. Hudson’s nerves were a mess. Molly had made sure to visit for tea more often than usual while John was distracted. As small as it seemed, the little things mattered in hard times.  
Mrs. Hudson, to her credit, knew she was being coddled.  
“Molly, you really are a dear to worry about silly old me but what about you? I’m sure this is all difficult for you too.”  
Mrs. Hudson put an encouraging hand on top of Molly’s, a maternal action that Molly had never been much used to growing up.  
“I’m sure it’ll all get resolved. I keep telling myself anyway but at least work is distracting me. Sometimes the solitude is nice.”  
“He takes you too much for granted sometimes, but I’m glad Sherlock has you.”  
Molly blushed.  
“Mrs. Hudson we aren’t...wait a moment, I thought you thought John and Sherlock were…” she trailed off, making a vague hand gesture.  
Mrs. Hudson chuckled.  
“Oh that’s just me teasing. John has a new girl every couple of months and Sherlock has you. I’m not as daft at those boys sometimes think.”  
“But we aren’t together, Sherlock and I.”  
“If you say so, dear.”  
Molly realized there was little she could say to convince Mrs. Hudson otherwise, so she doesn’t bother. It surprised her still that she even kept assuming such things. Everyone else just saw it as they always had; that Molly fancied Sherlock in a tragically unrequited way that was hopeless because Sherlock was who he is. It was funny that Mrs. Hudson, who had known him for so long, seemed to think otherwise. But then the older woman had such optimistic hope for Sherlock that Molly couldn’t even be bothered by the flawed assumption.  
“I’m glad he has you too, Mrs. Hudson.”  
Because Sherlock, bless him, sometimes needed all the help he could get. More now than ever.

***

When he realized there were cameras in Baker Street, he tried not punching the wall. How long, what did they see, who did they see? They’d have seen John, Mrs. Hudson, the clients. That wouldn’t have been a surprise. But they would have also seen the times *she* had stopped by, with body parts, with reports, with nothing at all. Sometimes for a quick moment, sometimes for a long time over tea and experiments. He had to wonder what the camera saw, the proverbial fly on the wall. What could be discerned when the walls weren’t altogether up. Molly thought she did not count, but what had Moriarty seen? What had he observed that Molly couldn’t see, that Sherlock would not look at. Oh, she was brilliant in her own right, but Molly Hooper was only human. He couldn’t expect her to see through the walls, despite how much she rattled at them. Not even The Woman, despite what even John thought, had rattled them so hard. Because he didn’t let anyone onto it, he was always keeping distance with his words. Even she believed it, that she wasn’t that important.  
It had been safer that way, hadn’t it? Kept at arm’s length, always in the background, never a main character of the story where she’d be a target. It was safer for her, wasn’t it? Or safer for him. It was all blurring nowadays, and things were slipping away from him.  
But before he could sink into this new surge of anger, at the intrusiveness on his private life, LeStrade appeared at the door.  
“No.”  
One word, the answer to the question he knew was the reason the DI was there. Donovan was likely waiting downstairs, he would bet. Her idea, he would also bet. It was easy for everyone to think of the worst of him these days, he wasn’t a particularly good man in the ways that mattered to most people. But that wasn’t what it was about right? That wasn’t what mattered. Would being nice make the deductions quicker? No. So it was irrelevant. He supposed he couldn’t blame Donovan too much in her suspicions; she was relentless, blinded by her perceptions, and not the most pleasant to deal with, but she was a good cop and even at times almost logical. Moriarty’s yarn was spun well, and Sally was clearly applying Occam’s Razor to it all. It was the most likely conclusion: that Sherlock Holmes wasn’t actually preternaturally brilliant, finding the impossible facts and deducing them in a moment. He shouldn’t care that they’d prefer he be an ordinary man, he had never cared what people thought.  
So why was he so angry at the idea that that was exactly what people would think?  
LeStrade left, the conversation not satisfactory, and he can feel John’s concern and it annoyed him. He shouldn’t even care, and perhaps that was why he took his frustrations out on John. Was John worried they were right? That Sherlock was just ordinary in the end?  
But of course not, as John had said, no one could pretend to be that much an annoying dick all the time. Most people would have been offended, but Sherlock half-smirked. At least some parts of his image remained intact. Still, it was all becoming troubling.  
It had been exciting to find a rival worthy of his attention, to play at a different level, but at what cost? His reputation was suffering, people were dying, people close to him were being hurt. He thought of Molly, trying in earnest to appear content with her ‘office romance.’ How she reacted to learning it was a lie. Her quiet dignity in insisting to the very end that she was the one in control of her brief relationship with Jim From IT. The danger it had put John in.  
It had been so much easier when he’d been alone, but then had he really ever been alone? Mycroft had always been there, even during their rockiest moments, and he had been working with LeStrade for years. Mrs. Hudson mothering him for ages. And Molly, on and off always there. John hadn’t really been the first, but he was something of a final piece to Sherlock’s menagerie. But now he had put them all in danger. Everything was falling apart but he would keep going.  
So when in the coming days, he found himself and John suddenly fugitives, he kept playing the Game. He has to. Even when Moriarty changed it in ways even the great Sherlock Holmes could not predict. Richard Brooks. Reichenbach. It was all coming together and Sherlock, for the first time in a long time, dreaded his conclusions. And when he did piece it together, when on that quiet nighttime street he just *knew*, it wasn’t even a surprise when she was the first person to come to mind. Wasn’t she always, in the end, when it really mattered? He had a rough sketch of what needed to be done, and knew John Watson wasn’t the one to do it. It could only be her, and he hated himself for what he was about to ask. It was a lot, too much, but it was an impossibility she could make possible.  
So he left John behind, heading for the only other place aside from Baker Street that felt secure. She was still there, of course, he had her work schedules memorized. But she was leaving for the day so he had to act quickly.  
He is so still, as he watched her move through the lab, turning off lights, knowing how to navigate her way through the dark. She always had.  
“You’re wrong, you know,” he began, ad she jumped slightly in fright before she calmed, recognizing his voice. She stood, back straight, the doors behind her. He stood in the shadows. Were he more philosophical, he would be inclined to think how poetic they were then and there.  
“You do count, you’ve always counted and I’ve always trusted you,” he said, and it’s the truth in the plainest terms possible. Not because he wanted her to do something for him or because he was trying to sway her, because he needed her to know that. Because there were not many people, not one person really, he held to that level of regard. Not even Mycroft, who had misguidedly sold him out to the press, not even John, who couldn’t always observe clearly. “But you were right. I’m not okay.”  
She didn’t flinch or blow him off. She should, after the way he treated her earlier, but instead she was direct and anything but a mouse.  
“Tell me what’s wrong.”  
No preambles, no polite conversation, this was Molly in diagnostic mode.  
“Molly, I think I’m going to die.”  
He was being dramatic, he knew it. But she would understand, and from the way her eyes darkened he knew she was beginning to.  
“What do you need?”  
He moved towards her, joining her in the light.  
“If I wasn’t everything that you think I am…” the man behind the Great Detective, the man who had in fact complained John was going to Harry’s for Christmas, the man who sometimes let her see the human side or as near as possible, “Everything that I think I am…” The brilliant Great Detective, THE Sherlock Holmes, the machine. “Would you still want to help me?”  
If he was a lie, if he was ordinary, if he was anything less than what either of them thought him to be. If he was truly uncaring and unfeeling. He had no reason to doubt her of all people, that was why he was there wasn’t it, why he was always there, but he needed to be sure, he needed to know. He needed her reassurance, and wasn’t that quite the thing?  
“What do you need?” she asked again, reinforcing. And he has his answer to the current problem, to more than just that.  
And it was one word, one simple word, carrying the weight of his world.  
“You.”  
Because even when she never came first to anyone’s mind when it came to him, even when he wanted it that way, she had always been the one he could turn to without fail. And because even Moriarty wouldn’t have entirely seen it either or expected it, it made her essential. Molly Hooper, the constant variable, was the wild card no one would expect. One, he was learning these day, that even he didn’t expect.  
It was a surprisingly quick plan, and they worked through the countless scenarios together as they sat at a quiet bench outside of Bart’s. She hated it, he could tell, and he had to agree. But she saw it was vital, she knew he had calculated every other way out of it, every other move against Moriarty, and as much as he trusted her she trusted him back. He was so rarely the type to feel humbled, but knowing the extent of her faith in him made him feel it to the bone.  
So when he stood on the roof, when Moriarty had played his final, unexpected hand, Sherlock had at least one thing he could be grateful for, it was only three bullets and not four. No bullet for Molly. It would work, and he would keep the rest of them safe. He wasn’t lying when he told Moriarty he was no angel, he never had been, but the angels were on his side or least one in particular. But now he had a few more lies to tell.  
He hated these ones, he doesn’t enjoy that he’s about to try and dismantle everything John Watson knew about him, but it would save them all, it would conceal his tracks, it was the step towards checkmate he needed to take no matter the cost.  
To save them all, he would destroy Sherlock Holmes. Strange how the thought felt so third-person but as much as everyone thought him to lack self-awareness, even he knew the Great Detective wasn’t entirely who he was. Whoever he was. One day, he’d have to re-examine that, but Sherlock Holmes was about to be a ghost so it would have to wait.  
But he does know one thing, he is not a machine. Machines don’t feel pain, and right now he felt it all.  
He was, after all, only human and had to say goodbye to the city that was home, to the people who had come into his life that for some reason foolishly decided he was worth caring about.  
And so Sherlock Holmes fell. 

And it worked, of course, and Molly was brilliant as ever. She came running right to his supposed side, his name a choked sob on her lips. She didn’t say a word to John, who was still kept away out of necessity. It was better if John was kept outside. He knew she was playing a part but her tears, as they dropped onto him from where he lay on the slab as she pointedly ordered everyone to get out of the lab immediately, were real. A memory came back to him, her sliding to the kitchen floor of a flat hundreds of miles away and years earlier. As much as she ruled her own little kingdom of it, death has sometimes been a cruel friend to Molly Hooper.  
He was self-aware enough to know, even though she was efficient as ever and got the job done down to the letter of their plan, that it was breaking her heart. As he shrugged back into his Belstaff and sat quietly at her side as she drew up his death certificate, he saw all too clearly her hands shake.  
He wished, in one rare moment, that he was the type of man who knew exactly what to say to comfort her, but some deductions escaped even him. So instead he let her take his coat and clothes as he slipped into surgical scrubs and a cap, donning fake glasses. It allowed him to slip through the hospital and to the locker room, where another disguise awaited in her locker. He’d had the combination to it for years.  
He slipped on the shabby tweed suit as Molly slipped into the locker room.  
“There’s not much food at the moment but I’ll get something on the way home when I’m done here. Feed Toby, if you don’t mind?”  
She was making small talk absentmindedly, it was her defense. He didn’t reprimand her, they were so far past that now.  
“It’s fine,” he murmured, trying to tie the long green tie. He’d never been a tie person and it was an unnecessary skill, deleted. She must have picked up on that, because suddenly she was there taking the fabric in her hands and slipped it deftly into place and tightening it.  
It was all just killing time now that he was dead, the Game to its current conclusion, but he had a couple of days and for once he would try and hold onto these smaller moments that always seemed obsolete before. The way the streetlights flickered on at sunset, how the light glittered off the Thames crossing Tower Bridge, how empty and quiet Borough was at night once the market closed. The way Molly Hooper looked into his eyes in that moment as she stood so close to him holding onto the lapels of the tweed jacket as if they were a lifeline.  
The moment is not long, but he stored it away in his Mind Palace in the suite that had always belonged to her. These were things he no longer felt compelled to delete, the context he’d someday want when it came to her. In that short moment, a lifetime seemed to pass them by. It wasn’t altogether a bad life.  
He absconded away to her flat, fed the cat that still seemed to adore him, and left her to finish the work they started together. 

***

She looked at John and Greg, her eyes glassy and heart heavy. They sat in her office, and she realized it was the first time John had ever seen the room. She hated lying to him, she hated that she would have to keep lying to him for however long it took. He was a decent man and had become a good friend to them all. In some ways, he was almost the grumpy older brother she never had.  
And now she was lying to people she cared about, for him. And she would do it again and again. She supposed the line in the sand had always been obvious.  
“It’s probably my best work yet, not that it matters,” she murmured.  
“Why’s that?” Greg asks, because it’s clear he didn’t know what else to say.  
“Sherlock never wanted an open casket funeral,” she answered.  
John raised his head sharply at that, eyes wide.  
“How could you possibly know that?”  
It stung when it shouldn’t have, and she knew John was grieving but so were they all. John Watson wasn’t the only one hurting.  
“Because I’ve known Sherlock Holmes since I was twenty-two years old, before either of you ever knew him, and the papers may call him your doctor but I’ve been his acting primary care provider since…”  
Since that awful night he had overdosed and Mycroft had brought him to Bart’s.  
“Mols, it’s okay, we understand,” Greg interjected and she’s never felt more grateful for him in her entire life.  
“Sorry, Molly, I just…”  
“I know, John. I know.”  
She left an hour later, excusing herself early. Everyone at Bart’s understood when she said she was taking PTO. She was grateful.  
When she walked through her flat door carrying takeaway burgers and saw him lying on her couch with Toby curled up on his stomach, she felt herself trying desperately not to cry. It wasn’t going to be forever. It felt like it, though.  
“Molly,” he began, but she shook her head.  
“I’ve got cheeseburgers. You must be famished.”  
“Molly,” he said again, standing now to walk towards her as Toby meows in annoyance and scampers off.  
“It’s fine, Sherlock. I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”  
“I know it has. I know you’ll be fine. You’re always fine, Hooper. You always will be.”  
She has no idea what to say to that, and doesn’t need to. This is one of the things about her Sherlock Holmes did see, finally saw. She cared about him, deeply, she always would and even though things felt crystallized in this one horrible event she would not stand still for long, not even for the great Sherlock Holmes. He would leave, she would mourn, but she would not remain frozen as she was, as she had been. Molly Hooper would move on because as much as she cared about him her life did not hinge upon Sherlock Holmes. It never really had.  
And that’s why she had always endured his impossible self, really. She never needed anyone’s pity for her feelings, she wasn’t some tragic lovelorn ingenue.  
And Sherlock Holmes saw that, and that’s what mattered.  
“Thank you, for being...nice right now,” she said, because that’s the only word for her.  
“I should have been nicer to you before,” he lamented, and she knew he meant it. He never could actually lie very well to her.  
She smiled, feeling the need to lighten the dreadful air. Moriarty had taken a lot from them, but he wouldn’t take hope away.  
“Maybe in the next life. I’ll hold you to it.”  
He looked at her for a long moment, his blue-green eyes so clear, and a small smile turns up at the corner of his mouth.  
“I do think you’ll be the death of me.”  
It was a joke, a terrible one. Well then.  
“I already have been, according to the paperwork.”  
And then he laughed, genuinely, and it was the warmest thing she had heard in so long.  
“See, I’m not rubbish at jokes,” she teased.  
He took the takeaway bag from her one hand, and smiled at her again. It was bittersweet.  
“Molly Hooper...I will miss you.”  
She doesn’t respond for a moment. The weight of his honesty was so heavy. She swallowed thickly, and walked towards the kitchen.  
“Careful Sherlock,” she said playfully over her shoulder, “People will think we’re in love.”  
She set the bag down on the kitchen bar and fished out their burgers and chips. He pulled out one of the stools and sat across from her.  
“People would have to think I have a heart first. I’m often told…”  
“That you don’t have one,” she fished for him, “I know.”  
She doesn’t miss the long gaze he gives her.  
“But we both know that’s factually not true,” he said, slowly.  
She paused in her ministrations of grabbing napkins. The way he looked at her was too much.  
“Yes well, hopefully I don’t have to jump start it A&E ever again. Try to keep it going a while longer while you’re undercover.”  
She thought that was what he meant, she let them both think that’s what he meant. They didn’t say much as they ate their late dinner.  
Three days later, she stood inside a church next to Sherlock Holmes at the altar. Or rather, next to a coffin that supposedly contained Sherlock Holmes, and never in the way she would have imagined standing at an altar with him.  
She wore the new black Burberry dress that sat in the back of her closet, it was simple but elegant and felt like the right thing to wear to the posh boy’s funeral. He wasn’t around the flat when she got dressed, and she wondered if he would have appreciated the effort in her dressing for the occasion.  
John was too paralyzed in his grief to speak, so she stood to say some words about Sherlock Holmes. There were so many words, not enough words.  
She looked at everyone before her in the pews, Mrs. Hudson sniffling, Mycroft more or less a statue with Eliza sitting next to him. She wondered, briefly, if Sherlock ever figured it out about those two but that was for another time.  
She took a breath. For all the lying she would be doing, she could give some truth.  
“The first time I met Sherlock Holmes, I dumped coffee all over him. If you knew him well you’d understand why. See, a lot of people think we met through the hospital, but I knew Sherlock Holmes way back when we were younger although he was never so much young as much waiting. Waiting to find what was right for him. It hasn’t been an easy road, and sometimes he could be infuriating, but regardless of whether one thinks he’s truly brilliant or was truly mad, there’s no denying he was something else entirely. The world is a dimmer place without him.”  
She walked back to her seat, next to Greg, who put a hand on her shoulder. He’d gone before her, talking about how Sherlock Holmes was a great man, how he’d always hoped he’d see him become a good one, and how he wanted to believe he was getting there.  
The reception was quiet, and she clung to the corners of room. She hated seeing them all so sad like this. It felt like Moriarty won. Maybe he had won. She had wondered where his parents were, it seemed like the only people in his family to show up were Mycroft and their Uncle Rudy. So when she grabbed her coat and slipped out the door, she didn’t expect the Uncle to follow.  
“Miss Hooper.”  
She turned around, not really looking him in eye. She supposed she could see the family resemblance. He certainly sounded like Sherlock. Too much like Sherlock.  
“Are you insane?!”  
“No, just dead.”  
She took in the black suit, the carefully applied theater makeup, the grey-haired wig and she had to admit, it was an impressive disguise. Everyone was so caught up in their grief no one would look at him too hard.  
“Of course you’d crash your own funeral. How very you.”  
“Well, it’s a good way to hear nice things about oneself.”  
“Since when do you care what people think?”  
“Since it mattered.”  
She shook her head.  
“You look really nice.”  
She rolled her eyes.  
“Oh don’t you start that now.”  
“No I mean it. Burberry, new. I appreciate it.”  
She exhaled, loudly.  
“Care to escort me home, then?”  
She made him ride the Tube instead of taking a cab and he didn’t complain. They ate dinner and watched crap telly together. She knew time was running out but for just a little longer she wanted to pretend. It’s somewhere around midnight when she yawned. It had been an awfully long day and her feet hurt from the high heels and her head hurt from everything.  
“We should go to bed,” she mumbled, and then caught herself. “I mean sleep!”  
He gave her a soft look, and nodded.  
“You’re right.”  
She was surprised when he followed her to the bedroom.  
“Sherlock?”  
“It’s been quite the day, Molly. My own funeral, after all.”  
He must want the bigger space of his room, and she didn’t feel the energy to object.  
“Okay, I’ll take the sofa then.”  
“No.”  
No?  
He was looking at her so earnestly she could only nod and mumble an ‘okay’.  
So they laid together, awkwardly, neither really asleep. This was never how she pictured having Sherlock Holmes in her bed, but she would take small victories where she could before they said goodbye.  
“Sherlock, I’ve always meant to ask you but never really worked up to it. Now’s a better time than any I suppose to ask: why did you help me get to my dad back when he was about to pass? We weren’t really friends, and I’m sure it cost you to own Mycroft. So..why?”  
He turned on his side to look at her. She had been thinking so loudly he could practically read every thought rolling off of her, she would bet.  
“Because you would have been devastated if you hadn’t been able to say goodbye, and I had the power to give you that time.”  
“With nothing to gain in return?”  
“Well, you had typed up our labs.”  
“Sherlock,” she murmured, calling his bluff.  
“I didn’t think about why, I just acted. It was better than you being so broken up on the floor.”  
She knew it was foolish and she wouldn’t think too hard about it as she shifted her weight towards him, flung a hand to splay across his neck, and pressed her lips to his. She really had such a strange habit over the years of kissing him out of the blue it’s a wonder he hadn’t short circuited. With that thought crossing her mind, she was a hair’s breadth from backing off, apologizing, because this was Sherlock Holmes and as much a great man he could be at times he was still not good with feelings or acknowledging that he even had any.  
She knew that was bullshit, she always knew it was bullshit, but she had humored him all this time.  
So when he began kissing her back, when a warm hand rested on her elbow, she was surprised. Enough to pull back and look into his face. She didn’t even need to ask the question, she knew he’d read it loud and clear.  
“I was able to actually respond this time, without you bolting.”  
“You could have pushed me away...I know this isn’t your thing. You didn’t have to...”  
“You just risked everything to do the impossible for me, Molly, I think I could handle a bit of snogging. And besides, if I’m a dead man at least I know how it feels.”  
“To be snogged? But you’ve been…”  
“To want to kiss back for once. You never let me the two times before.”  
Oh. “Oh...third time’s the charm, then.”  
She didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t dumb, he wasn’t not suddenly in love with her. And she didn’t know what to do with the whirlwind of emotions she felt for him anymore, but she did realize something she hadn’t always seen clearly: he does like her. Daresay, cared about her. And she thought, with a small grin, seemed to think she was enough a good kisser to actually respond. Next time she heard John call him a machine, she’d have that over him.  
John. She couldn’t tell him. She didn’t even know when that would even be, when they’d all ever see each other again...if...  
“Molly, neither of us will sleep if you keep thinking that loudly. Perhaps I should snog you for once to quiet you down.”  
She whipped her head at him, at the almost exasperated tone that was trying to so awkwardly be playful at the same time, and she giggled.  
“Sherlock, please don’t feel need to flirt, it’s not really your area,” she said, mimicking him.  
“I was...am an ass.”  
“You are,” she shifted closer and looked at him full on, “but I think there’s hope for you in the next life, Sherlock Holmes.”  
“Perhaps there will be.”  
She wondered if he really believed that. “Speaking of, postcards.”  
“Come again?”  
“You won’t be able to call or email but you could send me postcards now and then, so I know you’re okay.”  
That you aren’t dead for real, she thought.  
“And say what?”  
“I don’t know, something only I’d know? It’s not that hard, I’m sure that big brain of yours will figure it out.”  
She yawned again, the day finally caught up to her but she didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want him to go. She wanted him to stay forever. She knew he couldn’t.  
“Also, one more thing?”  
“What?” he asked, and she could hear the sleep in his voice too.  
“Stay alive. Don’t throw your life away over this. He’d definitely win, then.”  
He didn’t reply, and soon sleep claimed her.

Sherlock watched her, took in her soft snores. He felt exhaustion claw at him, but in that moment he he realizes three fundamental truths: that he will miss her; not the lab or her assistance, but *her*. That she will be fine, that she will move forward, that she will not be in danger. He’s kept her at a distance so well that she’s the last person anyone thinks of, except for him. And that while everyone else could think that Sherlock Holmes didn’t have a heart…  
‘But we both know that’s not true,’ Moriarty’s words whispered through his mind.  
Because the truth was, the truth even he tried to bury and not look at, was that he didn’t possess a heart like most people did; it was with someone else. With the person who had revived it years ago, with the person who had always been there and who he could always trust without fail, whom he had always taken for granted and who didn’t even know what she held onto, how much of him she actually held onto. Even he was still learning the extent of it all when he wasn’t blinded by his walls, by being the Great Detective.  
For all his devastating intelligence, he could be so bloody stupid. And possess such awful timing. Perhaps it was true, that one re-evaluated their life at the moment of death. And maybe in the next life, indeed, he would be kinder to her. Let her know she mattered, as much as he could let her know. Maybe he’d stop lying to himself, or lie less. Maybe he’d let her rattle the walls more.  
If that lifetime ever came. So yes, he would stay alive. For the sake of stopping Moriarty’s network once and for all, for his brother who apparently couldn’t accomplish anything without him, for LeStrade who deserved to have his reputation back, for Mrs. Hudson who cared and fretted so much, for John Watson...who was teaching him what friendship meant. But most importantly, for Molly Hooper: the girl who had bested him long before The Woman ever had, and only now he truly realized it.  
He wrapped her in his arms gently as she slept. He would allow himself this memory to hold onto through the cold days ahead.

Two months passed, and Meena hovered extra closer those days, worried for Molly. Meena hadn’t always liked Sherlock, but Molly had and that was what counted. But that didn’t stop Meena from hinting that when Molly was ready she knew some blokes she could introduce her to. She knew an accountant, Tim was it? She wanted to help. Maybe at some point, she’d take her up on it.  
She still saw Greg a lot, her work with the police wouldn’t end in Sherlock’s absence, but she had been avoiding John. Maybe at some point that would get easier, she would ring him up for lunch now and again. She did, however, make a point to keep taking tea with Mrs. Hudson. She didn’t want her to be lonely with John having moved out. She wondered if things could ever go back to as they were, if and when Sherlock ever came back.  
If he was still alive.  
That question was, for the time being, answered in the form of a postcard from New Zealand that came in the mail with no return address, no hello, only one sentence, “Black, two sugars.”  
Molly Hooper blinked, read the words again, and cracked right up in her kitchen until her eyes watered.


End file.
